Rebane's Ruminations

EU responsible for illegals from Africa?!

George Rebane

Another indication of the ongoing feckless demise of the EU is its handwringing about the fatalities among people attempting to illegally enter Europe from the northern shores of Africa.  Before going any further, I submit that any reasonable person will admit that Africa is essentially a failed continent comprised of failed and dysfunctional states (with Egypt tenuously excepted).

It is instructive to watch the self-flagellation from the Vatican and noted media outlets like The Economist.  The latter’s 25apr15 edition features a cover photo of a capsized boat on which its hapless passengers are trying to save themselves.  Under the title “Europe’s boat people”, it boldly delivers its judgment that this human tragedy is Europe’s “moral and political disgrace”.

Given what the Africans and Arabs are doing to themselves, I have a difficult time understanding how these miserable migrants have become Europe’s boat people.  How do countries that have a functional social order and governance suddenly become responsible for not only accepting but also inviting illegal entry into their lands by peoples who have demonstrably dysfunctional cultures and belief systems that are antagonistic toward the lands and people from which they seek succor?  And then it becomes a moral and political disgrace for white Europe when such throngs pay exorbitant amounts to sleazebag smugglers and allow themselves to be cast off in unseaworthy rust buckets that then founder with tragic losses on their short trips north.

The EU is simply incapable of solving the problems of Africa and the Mideast that give rise to these migrations.  And whatever it does to facilitate safe passage over the Mediterranean and provide a warm welcome on their own shores will do nothing save increase the flow of the unwanteds, keep the smugglers in business, and relieve pressure for any change in the ruthless and incompetent governments from under which these people emigrate.  Yet Europe’s socialists can only blame themselves for the ongoing human tragedies on foreign shores.  So the question remains, how have these migrants become Europe’s boat people and not Africa’s boat people?

Sandbox - 27apr15

[For the record, 27apr15 The Union published my letter critiquing Mr George Boardman's column. The letter was also copied into the 23apr15 sandbox's comment stream as its opening comment.]

The Liberal Mind - ‘You didn’t create anything, the government did.’

George Rebane

The lamestream has been extra silent about the Raisin Takings.  You do, of course, know about Horne v. USDA that started wending its way through SCOTUS last week?  This is where the government trucks pull onto your farm and demand that you fork over a percentage of your harvested crop for which they pay you zilch.  They have been playing these games on and off since the Depression – remember the grainy newsreels showing federal agents pouring milk from those galvanized metal milk cans into the gutters?

Most people have never heard that our government has been doing such things ever since.  The explanation given is that keeping your product off the market will raise prices, and that will be for the common good.  There is something in the Constitution about that called the ‘takings clause’ which says that if the government has to take any of your property to serve a greater public need, then they have to pay you a fair price - “just compensation” - for it.  Zilch is not just compensation.

The Horne family has been making raisins in Fresno for decades, and the hoops the federal legal system has asked them to jump through is summarized in this piece, ‘The Incredible Raisin Heist’.  One of my favorites from the report was the feds telling the Hornes that they would be fairly compensated by selling their remaining raisins into a market that would then pay them a higher price when California’s raisin confiscations are figured in.  Oh yes, a runner up was ‘if you don’t want to have your raisins taken by the government, then you shouldn’t grow them in the first place’.  You gotta love the progressive road to tyranny via a nod to socialism along the way.

I bring this up because Horne will be a seminal property rights case of this century, bigger than Kelo v New London was in the last one.  But this one is being fought within a new understanding ever since people like Obama, Clinton, and Warren started telling their gruberized constituencies that all enterprise and success in the private sector was really due to and came from government.  Therefore the government could reach into your pockets or property and take what they damn well wanted, because it is really theirs to begin with.

Lately this message has been strongly argued in these pages by readers of various collectivist hues.  The scary part is that we as a nation are now so dumb and coddled that at least a third of Americans would be ready to march under the hammer and sickle in a heartbeat, given the promise that inequality would then be stamped out and they would get their ‘fair share’.

Notice what brings this to the fore are the ever more frequent statements in the lamestream by liberal politicians and progressive pundits pointing out the common basis for the state’s claim on your property and perspiration.  If what you own or accomplished in any way involved anything that was built, administered, or accessed through the collective, then your rights to those fruits are secondary to that of the collective, i.e. the state.  The state determines its cut and takes it off the top; what’s left over is yours, and if that remnant cannot sustain your enterprise, then it’s too bad – the ‘peepuhl’ come first.

The saddest thing is that our system was constituted to let us retain the means to oppose the rapid rise of an obvious and palpable tyranny.  It was not designed to handle such bit by piece insults to our liberties through bread and circuses.  Instead, it was designed to be managed by leaders of education, honor, and goodwill, who are vetted and elected by a suitably informed electorate – recall Jefferson’s, ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’  Today’s evaporation of our freedoms underlines the results of ignoring Jefferson’s wisdom – hence liberty, property, and security are on the wane.

Sandbox – 23apr15

[The nearby photo of a massive dredging operation is of the Chinese busily enlarging some Spratly islands in the South China sea to better house their growing military presence there in order to cement their lawless takeover of the islands.

This is a continuation of the crap that’s going on with Russia in the Ukraine and Iran in Iraq and Yemen, and who knows what else is cooking where.  The common denominator for the world’s bad guys is to ‘make hay while Obama shines’, and I purposely use ‘shine’ in its two meanings.  The man’s weaknesses and incompetence on the world scene are as apparent to all as are his lies to Americans.  gjr]

The Con-Con and SoJ debates

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 April 2015.  This commentary is apropos to the recent RR posts 'Constitutional Convention - the debate continues' and 'Suddenly SoJ has become real' and their respective comment streams.]

Most people around here have probably missed what is happening with the efforts to launch two historical initiatives – to hold a Constitutional Convention or Con-Con, and separate certain northern rural counties from California to form the new State of Jefferson.  The basis for both initiatives are contemplated in our Constitution, and proponents of both assert that they will follow the prescribed legal pathways to the letter in order to bring about these historic changes.

The Constitution’s Article V provides for holding a national Con-Con as one of the methods the Constitution may be amended.  If the legislatures of 2/3 of the states apply to hold a Con-Con, then Congress “shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments”.  As of today 34 or 2/3 of the state legislatures have passed such ‘applications’ to hold the first ever Con-Con.  However, the never-tried application process is a bit murky because some states have withdrawn, and some have then re-applied.  It will be up to Congress and/or the Supreme Court to resolve the matter.

There are energetic factions on both the Left and Right who desire such a revisiting of the Constitution.  The Left seeks to do a massive rewrite in order to achieve a “modern constitution” in accord with their socialist tenets, and the Right seeks a very focused approach to insert a balanced budget amendment.  Both sides feel that once a Con-Con is launched, they will be able to control the assembled conclave for their respective ends.  Any work product output by the convention must then be ratified by ¾, or today 38, of the states.  Both sides feel they can muster at least 13 states to block ratification of any adopted amendments that they oppose.

From the looks of it, I believe the Left has the more accurate view of what can be done to gain their ends once the Con-Con is gaveled into session.  You can google Con-Con or go to my blog, Rebane’s Ruminations, for more information and participate in a debate about the matter.

The State of Jefferson or SoJ movement is about two years old.  California’s northern rural counties strongly believe that their voices have not been heard in Sacramento, and that the state has been acting contrary to their interests for several decades.  This sentiment, with related initiatives, has been shared by rural Americans in many states.  Here in California six northern counties have passed resolutions asking our legislature to start the separation process which ultimately will reach Congress.  The intended extent of SoJ will be from Placer to Mendocino counties in the south, and reaching up to the Oregon border.

In addition to the counties that have formally declared for separation and formation of the State of Jefferson, eleven more counties, including Nevada County, have active SoJ formation committees.  All these efforts have been roundly dismissed, denigrated, and mocked by California’s Left.  Then about two weeks ago a new political action committee named ‘Keep it California’ was formed.  The objective of this PAC is to organize strong and vocal opposition to the SoJ movement, thereby giving lie to the assertion that SoJ has been nothing but the frothings of “a small group of extremists”.

The stated opposition to SoJ centers around a sclerotic analysis of the new state’s economy that grossly misrepresents its financial and commercial prospects.  The real fear is that as SoJ continues to gain momentum, then so will similar movements in other western states.  And that would totally torpedo the progressives’ design for an American future as delineated in the UN’s Agenda21 vision.  But SoJ proponents believe that in this most exceptional country the world has ever seen, the new and never-been-tried has always served as a beacon to innovation, enterprise, and a better life.

The Nevada County Board of Supervisors will hear a presentation by the county’s SoJ steering committee on 12 May at the Rood Center scheduled for 1:30PM.  There will be an appeal for the Supes to join Nevada County with those in favor of forming the new State of Jefferson.  In attendance will be members of Keep it California who also plan to have their voices heard.  Please consider attending this meeting from which I promise you will emerge either informed or enflamed, or perhaps both.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on georgerebane.com where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

 

Constitutional Convention – The debate continues

George Rebane

In recent years both the Right and Left have launched initiatives to hold a constitutional convention (Con-Con) to settle some real serious issues on the future direction of these United States.  Promoters on both sides devoutly believe that there exist provisions and they have expertise to implement them to insure that the con-con will not veer out of control and result in new amendments deleterious to their respective causes or worse.  I remain a skeptic about whether such control is possible, let alone its being correctly exercised.

In my continuing study of the matter I have talked at length to eloquent Con-Con proponents like Mark Meckler.  Recently I discovered that Mr Bob Hren, an intellect and learned friend, who has had similar concerns, studied the matter, and written a revelatory summary on Con-Con.  Bob is a retired engineer and lawyer who lives in Nevada County, and now busies himself with more genteel pursuits like making fine wines.  I wanted to share his thoughts with RR readers, and Bob agreed to edit his analysis for more broader audiences interested in this historical undertaking.  You can download the entire six-page document here. Download Con-Con_BobHren_4-18-15

But before you dive into the specifics, let me give away the punch line by reproducing the paper’s conclusion –

In summary, advocating for a Con-Con is a very risky path for conservatives to pursue.  It plays into the hands of those extreme liberals who would place the USA under UN governance and thus runs the very real risk of losing the sacred liberties and rights embodied in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Conversely, the potential rewards of restating existing states’ rights or of an ineffective balanced budget amendment are small or insignificant.  There is absolutely no assurance that a Con-Con can be called on a limited number of topics, potentially resulting in a runaway convention that emasculates the Constitutional protections of liberties.

Reliance on one fourth of the states to ratify only conservative-backed amendments is a false hope given the massive PR and propaganda campaign that would be mounted.  Conservative state legislators in swing states would be faced with overwhelming media and public pressure and virtually unlimited monetary inducements to just go along with a “modernization” of the Constitution that would also include some ineffective conservative amendments.  This is the key backstop that conservative proponents of a Con-Con rely upon, but it is an extremely risky position.  Expecting conservative state elected legislators, especially ones facing a term limit, not to succumb to human failings under such pressure is unrealistic.  The result would be an emasculation of our liberties and rights. 

By pursuing a top down Con-Con, conservatives are also distracted from more proven methods of effective governance; that is from the bottom up rather than from the top down. 

We need to back away from this Con-Con precipice, focus on electing good officials at all levels, and take back our country one vote and one election at a time.

Suddenly SoJ has become real (updated 19apr15)

George Rebane

The State of Jefferson movement was started over a year ago to offer northern Californians and the citizens of its thinly populated rural counties an alternative to being ignored by the social engineers, central planners, and bureaucrats in Sacramento.  The cry from these people has been ignored for over a generation, and working within ‘the system’ of a state dedicated to serving the populous coastal urban areas which have totally different interests and goals has not worked, and shows no signs of working in the future.  If anything, the urban voters have sent more legislators to Sacramento to double down on the regulations and strictures they have already imposed on the rural north.

Sandbox - 16apr15

[Readers were starting to complain about the old sandbox getting a bit "stale" (some would have chosen a more robustly descriptive term, but then we do promote decorum on these pages), so we open a new one.  This day is propitious for another reason, today I brought home my fourth Jeep Grand Cherokee and bid a tearful good-bye to my last one, an unimaginably reliable vehicle that saw us through thick and thin, on/off road for thirteen years.  To me these cars have become as comfortable as a pair of old shoes, even though its designers (marketers?) try to foo-fooize the newer models with every imaginable button, beep, and display.  Hope this brand new baby grows up to have the legs of its forebears.]

Scattershots – 14apr15 (updated 15apr15)

George Rebane

Reading the papers this morning before running some errands in the flats, three little topics tickled my ire – which readers know is easier done than said.

Columnist and nationally known analyst of international affairs Bret Stephens shared an insight about the liberal way of lying from our national scene.  He attributes the latest fine tuning of the methodology to the Clintons that started in the 1990s, and which has been brought to its present state of perfection by Obama, who has most recently demonstrated its best practices in his Iran “framework” monologues.  But first, let’s see how it works and give credit where it’s due -

To you and me, the Clinton lies were statements demonstrably at variance with the truth, and therefore wrong and shameful. But to the initiated they were an invitation to an intoxicating secret knowledge. … What was this knowledge? That the lying was for the greater good, usually to fend off some form of Republican malevolence. What was so intoxicating? That the initiated were smart enough to see through it all. Why be scandalized when they could be amused? Why moralize when they could collude?

Educational Performance? Look Under the Rug (updated 14apr15)

George Rebane

The Nevada County Board of Supervisors will be presented the ‘State of the Schools in Nevada County’ by Superintendent of Schools Holly Hermansen.  (Download State of the Schools in Nevada County April 14, 2015)  The presentation slides have the story, but not the complete story.  In them Ms Hermansen tells the Supes about how many of what kind of schools we have, how population has declined, what laws the schools have to operate under, and the advent of Common Core here and across the nation.  (H/T to reader for the PPT)

There is nothing in there about the most important part of why parents send their children to school – to become educated in skills like reading, writing, and arithmetic, skills that prepare them for the workplace or advanced education and training.  The accomplishments of our schools seem to be focused on reducing bullying in the school yards, period.

In California, Nevada County’s schools are not the brightest bulbs on the state’s education tree, in fact they’re pretty dismal for a community that does not have to contend with inner city, cross-cultural, and English language problems like those that overwhelm our metropolitan areas.  One measure of this can be seen here.

I don’t know what other information the Supes have been given about our schools, but it sure seems that that the presentation by our schools’ superintendent should have a bit more meat on the bones.  The material presented is essentially a generalized pabulum of data instead of information for decision making about our schools.  It does not even come up to the level of confusing best efforts with achievement that is the standard fare when government units report to one another.  (We recall that data is facts and beliefs about the real world, and information is data formatted to support decision making – i.e. presented in formats that address the specific decision areas for which it is intended.)

A more relevant presentation would include a stark assessment of where the county is relative to the state’s schools, what impact such a performance decrement has on our students’ attempts to enter colleges and the job markets, and what alternative programs and reallocations of available resources are possible to improve the educational product delivered to our children.

Countering liberal economists promoting various government welfare programs, there is nothing to compare with education as being the most important ingredient in combatting inequality in our society.  Greenstein and Merisotis point out in a recent article some compelling statistics to make their point that ‘Education Does Reduce Inequality’.

MIT economist David Autor has an instructive thought experiment: The increase in wages for the top 1% between 1980 and 2005, if divided among the bottom 99%, would provide each household about $7,000 in additional income. But the wage gains of college graduates over the same period, divided among high-school graduates, would provide each household with $28,000 of additional income. All this comes into focus as we arrive at the end of another academic year.

During this time of the year we celebrate scholarships and commencements, and prepare to send Nevada County’s graduates (and dropouts) to join the nation’s annual 4.3 million young people who exit our education industry to join the workforce.  In this light we have to consider our mostly futile attempts to improve our county’s economy.  Do any wealth producing workers, who are also parents, really want to put their children into Nevada County schools?

Given what’s already under the rug, we need to pay more attention than ever to the wizards behind our education curtain.

[11apr15 update]  In today’s (11apr15) Union the debate continues between longtime RR reader and contributor Greg Goodknight and Linda Campbell, member of the Nevada Joint Union High School District Board of Trustees.  In ‘Common Cored, indeed’ Mr Goodknight responds to Ms Campbell’s 30may14 Union piece in which she took to task Mr Goodknight’s critique of math education in Nevada County.

I recall Ms Campbell’s rebuttal and attack last year as being extremely awkward and significantly off the mark regarding her claims and assessments.   In his response today Mr Goodknight quotes Ms Campbell extensively.  Being reminded of what Trustee Campbell said in print is somewhat jarring in the sense that we countenance such ignorance in those who serve to guide and make policy for our local schools.  Her membership on the school district’s board of trustees does not promise change in our county’s low scholastic rankings – of more immediate concern, are the board’s other members equally qualified?  Goodknight’s column underlines my recommendation that we take a closer look at our educational wizards behind the curtain.

[14apr15 update]  Here is a graphic taken from the above linked site showing our local schools' rankings in API performance which may serve as a proxy for other levels of instruction in the curriculum.  As we see, none of our schools are above the median rank in the state.

Life After Self-esteem

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 8 April 2015.]

We have all been to award ceremonies for academics and sports where the moderator intones, ‘We’re here to honor and recognize the marvelous achievements of our young champions who have demonstrated their drive and talents.  But in reality, in our eyes all of the participants in the contest are champions no less than those who won the competition.  Every student who took part deserves to be equally recognized, for they also put forth their best efforts, and so should also be counted as winners.’

For the last two generations self-esteem has been accepted as the gateway to learning and accomplishment in life.  Even parenting was politically corrected and given the prime goal of assuring that their little darlins never had a bad thought about themselves.  The received wisdom was to make sure that Johnnie and Susie first developed a high regard for themselves and their abilities, for they would then go on to become well socialized and productive citizens.  But over the years reality has seeped in to make many question that paradigm, both in education and on the job.  You see, the performance data on our Johnnies and Susies didn’t pan out to support ‘Self-esteem über alles!’

In recent years researchers like Dr Roy Baumeister, social psychologist at Florida State, and colleagues at other universities have been studying self-control in rigorous clinical environments.  Today their results are deemed revolutionary, and that would be accurate were their discoveries not exhumed knowledge that long lay buried.  Nevertheless, these results are worthy enough to be picked up by publications such as Nature and Scientific American.  In the latter’s April edition Baumeister’s piece, entitled ‘Conquer yourself, conquer the world’, opens with the now demonstrated idea that “self-control is not just a puritanical virtue.  It is a key psychological trait that breeds success at work and play – and in overcoming life’s hardships.”

Sandbox - 7apr15

[Well, the weather outside is frightening ... .  Since the trees have leafed, we are going outside periodically to knock the snow off those bent over branches of the 'specimen trees' we can reach.

And the local dust devil getting people roiled around Nevada County today is the question 'Was Terry Lamphier set up?' for the child porn allegations that he is facing.  Oh, the things that concern us in this hamlet as the state fights a politically amplified drought, the country prepares to adopt another 11 million illegal aliens into a still faltering economy and disintegrating culture, and the west refuses to acknowledge, let alone confront, radical Islam.]

Taxpayer Liability and the Export-Import Bank

[This piece was published in the April 2015 issue of The Nugget, the periodical of the Nevada County Republican Women Federated.  It is republished here to give RR readers a clear, complete, and concise exposition of the function and conduct of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, which is now wending its way through a congressional review process that will determine its future.  The Ex-Im bank has become a political issue as a result of charges that it is an entrenched vehicle for subsidies that favor a few large exporting corporations.  Congressional disposition is scheduled for this June before which it will again rise into the national attention span.  This is a heads up. gjr]

Jo Ann Rebane

With its charter expiring on June 30, 2015, congressional reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of the United States will be a hot topic in the next months.  This government owned bank “provides taxpayer-backed loans and loan guarantees to foreign countries and companies for the purchase of U.S. goods” and is the federal government’s export credit agency.  Created by FDR in 1934, taxpayers initially provided $1 billion in capital stock.  Ex-Im’s current mission is to “…aid in financing and to facilitate exports of goods and services, imports, and the exchange of commodities and services between the US and foreign countries and in so doing, to contribute to the employment of US workers.”

The Ex-Im bank, backed by the US taxpayer, has 4 tools it uses to reduce private lending risks against the possible default of a foreign buyer of US goods.

1) Loan guarantees, the bank’s largest activity, allows foreign and domestic lenders to finance foreign buyers of US exports with reduced risk as taxpayers ultimately guarantee 85% of each contract against default.

2) Direct loans to foreign buyers haven’t been used much since 1980 because commercial interest rates are lower than those of Ex-Im.

3) Working capital guarantees are short term loans to US exporters backed by anticipated receipts from foreign buyers whereby a US commercial bank (lender) receives from Ex-Im 90% of the loan balance if the foreign buyer defaults to the US exporter.

4) Export credit insurance can be purchased by a US exporter who extends credit to his foreign buyer, and Ex-Im pays to the exporter any outstanding balance in the case of default by the foreign buyer.

In FY 2013 the bank “authorized” $27 billion to support $37.4 billion worth of US exports, and this, according to its annual report raised the accumulated “exposure” or risk to taxpayers of $113.83 billion.

Moderate Republicans and Democrats, 58 of whom in January signed to co-sponsor legislation to reauthorize the bank for 5 years, contend that the Ex-Im bank promotes exports by financing projects private lenders might reject, creates/maintains US jobs by subsidizing exporting companies and incentivizing large exporters to include US made sub-systems in their projects  and products, by its charter assists small businesses to compete in the global market, and levels the playing field for US exporters increasing their ability to be competitive.  Here the government has decided that helping Boeing, General Electric and Bechtel Corp to export, lets them compete favorably against Airbus, Mitsubishi, etc. and helps the US economy, and is a good deal for taxpayers because Ex-Im is a profit-generating federal program, returning a net $1 billion to the Treasury in 2013.

Detractors, led by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, House Financial Services chairman, The Heritage Foundation and the Mercatus Center of George Mason University have spent the last year refuting those claimed benefits. They argue that it is not prudent for Ex-Im to finance projects rejected by private lenders (think of the Fannie & Freddie recent troubles), and that only 2% of all US exports had Ex-Im involvement,  with 98% of all exports taking place without Ex-Im facilitation.  While subsidizing certain exporters surely maintains the jobs provided by those employers, what is not known are the unseen effects on unsubsidized US firms and how their employees’ jobs were impacted. 

By charter Ex-Im must allocate 20% of its authorizations to support small business defined as firms with 500-1500 employees rather than the “less than 500” employee definition used by the Small Business Administration and Federal Reserve.  Even using its generous definition of “small” the Ex-Im bank authorized only 19% of its 2013 assistance to “small business” activity.  More interestingly, almost 1/3 of all assistance in 2013 went to Boeing Corporation in the state of Washington, hence the accusation Ex-Im is “Boeing’s bank”.

Since 2012 Ex-Im is required to categorize the purpose of each transaction - that is (1) assume risk others unwilling to take, (2) overcome limitations in private sector export financing, and (3) meet competition from foreign government sponsored export-credit financing.  However, today 50% of the bank’s current portfolio remains uncategorized and of the remaining categorized portfolio, only a third is intended to counteract foreign competitive disadvantages.  To the final point, opponents of Ex-Im doubt its claim of generating $1 billion in net revenues for the Treasury or its ability to do that in the future.  Opponents are alarmed by the bank’s dodgy accounting methods, sloppy record keeping, inadequate risk analysis, and default assumptions.  They are joined by the Government Accounting Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and Ex-Im’s own inspector general, all pointing to “under-reserving and underpricing of the portfolio risk.”  Additionally, the aircraft sector represents over 51% of the Ex-Im total portfolio value and could subject the entire enterprise to catastrophic loss in an industry down-turn like that of the recent mortgage market in 2008. 

At the very least, it seems the Ex-Im bank is neither a prudent nor transparent operation and needs more light shed on it.

[Mrs Rebane is the 2nd VP and Legislative Chair of the NCRWF]

California’s Drought and Moonbeam Madness

George Rebane

Governor Moonbeam’s latest dicta about how Californians should now take showers underlines the years long insane policies under which the Left has governed our state.  The most recently mandated 25% (of what) reduction of consumer water use is the direct result of “decades of environmental excess”.

Since 2000 alone the public has expressed its will to increase water storage capacity in NorCal by voting over $22B for such improvements in managing the state’s water resources.  Yet these monies have been redirected and pissed away by liberal state councils and commissions toward alternative uses such as affordable housing and “sustainable land use”.

NorCal has the state’s largest untapped water sources and locations for new water storage reservoirs.  But under the Agenda21 umbrella, which prescribes liberal land use and environmental initiatives, NorCal is recognized as the most inviting and logical region for population growth in California.  However, that flies straight in the face of A21’s stack-and-pack vision for America’s and world’s management of human populations.  Uninhabited lands must be retained uninhabitable and/or made so by appropriately draconian laws and regulations.

Environmentalists long ago latched on to A21 as their raison d’etre for all the prescriptions on public and private land use.  Consider that in California no major water infrastructure project has been completed since 1970.  One of the several cohorts of liberal dunderheads that is responsible for this travesty is the State Water Resources Control Board.  This group has mandated the ongoing release of millions of acre feet of fresh water into the Pacific because “every smelt matters”, and there have simply been no more places to store water during our wet years.  California has had four droughts during the last fifty years.  Fifteen years passed between the last drought and the start of the current one; fifteen years of unneeded water losses, especially from NorCal.

Today such bureaucracies are even hindering the development of alternative water sources such as desalinization plants – once the darling of environmentalists until technology advances made them feasible in the marketplace – since these would support growth in places distant from surface water sources.  In San Diego desalinization company Poseidon has been six years in permitting and litigation to build a $1B plant to supply 7% of the city’s water.  Among the hurdles was requiring Poseidon to “restore 66 acres of wetlands in return for its desalinization permit.”  In sight of such punishments by government, other desalinization projects have been abandoned.

There is a lot more to say about how socialists and central planners are dunning our state and country – and we will get it said in the fullness of time – but for now consider that everything to impede growth in California is being done that can be done without inciting revolt among the sheeple.  Today their crosshairs are on the state’s agri-businesses and its politically recalcitrant rural counties.  Moonbeam’s train from nowhere to nowhere will be completed before NorCal adds a single reservoir to capture and store water between the periodic droughts that California has suffered since Paleolithic times.  Something to think about as tonight we welcome the latest of the year’s sparse storms to grace the Sierra this winter.  (more here)

He is Risen!

Happy Easter from our family to you and yours.

George and Jo Ann

Ruminations – 3apr15 (updated 4apr15)

George Rebane

We’re back from a three week trip that took us and two other couples down to Scottsdale in our RVs to attend the annual Mercatus Center conference.  Connectivity was iffy in the various RV parks we stayed on our travels, so apologies for the less than meticulous attention – ha! - I could pay to RR in the interval.

Military exercises continue to rehearse the invocation of national martial law.  A correspondent in Florida reports on the latest “night operation” being conducted in Ft Lauderdale.  As covered here previously, these operations, today known as Jade Helm, have been a part of our federal government’s decades long preparations to combat massive subversion in America.  The putative enemy is not some minor faction like communists, neo-nazis, or even dissident Muslims, but main core American citizens who are not fans of big government and a centrally planned society.  You can pooh-pooh the recent specifics here and here, but the cited federally printed documents are hard to dismiss.

The outrage at the most recent mass murder of “scores of Christians” by Muslim ragheads in Kenya is again being addressed by the Left’s crickets whose lamestream feels little impetus to connect any dots beyond a sterile report of the massacre.  Meanwhile, here we get all riled up if some Christian baker refuses to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual wedding.  The public's rage is both frangible and fungible, therefore it must be correctly prioritized, marshalled, and directed.  More here.

In geo-strategic politics population demographics rule.  Pew Research announced that around 2050 Muslims and Christians will populate the world in equal numbers.  Muslims are outbreeding and out-colonizing Christians who more and more are prone to abandon their religion.  The nearby figure (double click) was filched from a WSJ report on the matter.

We now see that the ‘Iran framework’ is only a yet-to-be-negotiated, legally unbound “understanding” that is not commonly understood by its US and Iranian authors regarding how it will permit Iran to continue nuclear weapons development at an unobservable pace while enjoying the immediate lifting of economy stifling sanctions that, given the parties involved, cannot readily be ‘snapped back’ when Iran inevitably once more violates whatever is put in place this June to the disbelief of our Mideast allies - Obama foreign policy’s finest hour. More here and here.

[4apr15 update]  Former veteran NYT reporter and author Judith Miller is among those knowledgeable about the ins and outs of how we started the Iraq War.  Some of these people of mostly a liberal persuasion are no longer willing to quietly live the lie that the lamestream has concocted and the government schools faithfully repeated over the last decade.  In the 4apr15 WSJ she writes a major article – ‘The Iraq War and Stubborn Myths’ – in which she makes the case that “officials didn’t lie, and I wasn’t fed a line.”  Her piece begins with –

I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me. … OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there was George W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me. … None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired. (more here)

However, those narratives are a mainstay of the progressives’ mischaracterization of America’s conservatives as these pages serve to corroborate, and they will be maintained as long as our citizenry remains mired in dumbth.  And that, dear reader, is a timespan which tears at the very fabric of our republic.